The American obeyed with cold chills gripping his spine. Yet he could see little. The pit was deep, very deep. As his eyes searched the darkness of it he guessed that the bottom was twenty feet away.
Then a soft, slithering sound broke the dead stillness, and a low "his-s-s" which there was no mistaking.
"Adders," stated the doctor decidedly. "Puff-adders, my friend, and a bite it iss death, yess!"
Hammer did not know a puff-adder from a black snake, but he did know why the other had gazed so long into that pit of darkness, for there was a deadly fascination about it that compelled his eyes despite his loathing.
"If the treasure iss there, it can wait, yess!" exclaimed the scientist.
The American mentally added that it could wait until what Sherman said war was froze over, for all of him; but he still looked down until gradually the thing took shape before him.
The sides of the pit were straight and well paved, slimy, mossy, with never a break in the stones. Far down something scintillated for an instant, then again, and the slithering noise went rustling faintly without cessation. Hammer was aware that Krausz had come to his side and was pointing down.
"There—look at that. It iss a platform, no?"
With the words the scientist scraped a match and flung it down. The American got a glimpse of a small jutting-out stone, some two feet square, half-way down the pit, and below that a twining, shuddering mass of something that drove him reeling back with sickness strong upon him.
"That's enough," he gasped, wiping the cold sweat from his face. "I'll get out of here and stay gone, don't worry——"